Saturday, 18 April 2015

All Systems Down My Review Court

I am not
going to build up to it. Court is a film that hit me in my gut. It was not only
because it is a debut film of a director, who is all of 27 years old, that
belies his age and life experience, and that it has gathered so many award internationally, but because as the film says through a
song.. Don’t insult us by calling us artists… Art is just a way of hiding the
truth… a bold statement indeed, when people discuss art vs life and the
creative liberties that an artist must have. But does the artist become bigger
than the truth? This film is a courtroom drama, but so much more than it and aims and presenting truth and nothing but the truth. And yes, it
succeeds in great measures.

A film that
is so layered, so full of symbolism, and mind you not of the kind which only
the director will understand (wink). The characters are so minutely etched, it
is a pleasure to know them.

The story,
ah, that being the masterstroke, is of a folk singer/activist who is arrested
under the charges of abetting the suicide of a gutter cleaner. Why? Because he
performed in the locality where the gutter cleaner lived and two days later
committed suicide, found in the same gutters he has spent most of his life
cleaning. Even though the charge sounds highly ludicrous, the court takes it
seriously. After all justice is serious business.

And thus
unfolds the tale.. pitching so many worlds together, against each other… yet
with each other, as you see the story progress.

Chaitanya
Tamhane, the director uses each scene, almost every shot, to say something. He
has managed to comment on a lot of things… and unlike some films, has managed
to do it successfully.

The biggest
achievement of the film for me was that it made me feel I am fighting the case,
I was rooting so much for Narayan Kamble, that I wanted to scream out loud at
the way our systems run. Stock witnesses to archaic laws, the apathy of the
police, the dozing advocates and the Judge who keeps shifting from black to
white to gray.

The
detailing in the film is such a pleasure. Not showing off, but just being..
true. From the Public prosecutor who discusses olive oil prices in the local
train, cooks dinner every night, and
then finds time to go through her case, her routine life is without a spark,
barring an occasional lunch at a Maharashtra thali joint, with her husband and two kids.
She is the Mumbai Middle class, which works hard and still doesn’t make enough
money. You know she has studied hard to be where she is, and with limited
exposure, she relies on the tomes of law, reading her arguments verbatim. “But
law is law, no” You want to
bang your head when she drones on and on, and yet to see her, I mean really “see”
her.

The defence
lawyer… belonging to a rich Gujarati family, shops in Natures Basket, loves wine, Jazz and hanging out in swanky
lounges. Yes, he is modern and privileged. Yet he fights for the have-nots. His
refined self is in steep contrast to the drab courts, yet his largesse is what
makes him more human and empathetic to his clients.

Within the
scope of the story, Tamhane manages to address issues ranging from the caste divide to the lack of
safety equipment for people in hazardous professions, where a cockroach is
their saviour, to the UP Maharashtra divide, to the trend of outraging against
anything and everything by the various preservers of communities. The steep
poverty and the helplessness of the people who do not have resources to fight and
can be picked up for anything deemed unlawful by the police, who is clueless to
say the least.

The film is
not from one cut to another, it breathes organically, as life is… you can leave
the room, but the room is still brewing, he stays on scenes even when the
characters have left and it works beautifully. The actors are par excellence,
each one doing such a great job.

Nothing seems to be changing as centuries go by, we live in sad times, but there is also hope, there is also the
need to raise our voice… and yes, as the climax again underlines… Justice
meanwhile takes a leisurely nap.

I cried and
clapped various times in the film, laughed at the inanities of our justice
system but the feeling that was topmost was that of frustration and finally
building to one of “I wish I could be of some consequence in this society we
live in, be of help, coz this system is dead Jim”